I heard myself repeating in a monotone, “The world we share.”
“Did you think you were alone?”
I frowned, straining. Something was knocking at the door of my memory. I said, “Naga… Hindu mythology…”
Again, he asked, “Did you think you were alone? There are many rooms in the mansion of the world. If you stepped into the sky, Jay En, and surveyed the world with my eyes, you would see the many rivers and streams, and oceans of the mind, flowing from flower to butterfly, to lark to goat, to man, to elf to naga.”
And as he spoke, I realized that I was in space, looking down on our planet, but as I had never seen it in any photograph from NASA. It was a luminous ball, shrouded in the most fantastical mist of billions upon billions of colors. And each color was a stream or a river or a lake or an ocean, and they were all moving, entwining. And Naga was saying, “Each stream, Jay En, is a stream of conscious thought. Some are feeble and slow and sluggish, and they you see as gray or brown. Others are wild and furious, full of hunger and rage, and those you see in red or purple. Others are full of love and fertility, and those you see in pink and violet and green. Some, Jay En, are just feeling, like the yellows and greens of flowers, whose consciousness is simple, yet rich in feeling. Others crawl in the dark, like cockroaches seeking food, and these are also simple, blacks and grays and browns and shadow colors. Humans you will see in the whole, fantastic spectrum from black, murderous hatred to glorious, shining love and compassion but almost always tinged with the darkness of ignorance, believing themselves still to be masters—at best, caretakers—of this world.
“But open your eyes and see clearly, Jay En, and you will see more subtle streams of colors, and these are the thousands of lives that are not human but whose consciousness reaches far beyond human dreams. We share this world, Jay En, and we love it as humans do not yet know how to. We do not kill, torture and punish. We wait, and we try to teach. Sometimes we send a great teacher among the humans, to guide their steps, and sometimes we send a small teacher. Each teacher, great and small, has an equally important part to play.
“And so, Jay En, you must talk about Earth.”
We were sitting around the fire again. I could feel the warmth of the flames on my skin, and I could see the orange and yellow dancing on Naga’s scaly skin. There was a smile in its eyes.
I said, “What about Ar En?”
“One day, you will learn to ask questions that find answers. Ar En is your brother. He is your mirror. There are many forms of intelligent life in the world, young being. Some are motivated by love, like us. Others are motivated by confusion, like the humans. Yet others are motivated by anger and lust. You must be careful of them. But all are your brothers and sisters, and all are your mirrors, for they can teach you about yourself when you look into their hearts.”
I was beginning to feel a turmoil in my mind. I frowned at him and said, “Who are you?”
And in spite of its rigid, lizard face, it was smiling, and it seemed to be turning to smoke. Its voice came to me through the flames of the fire, which was growing and spreading. It said, “I told you, young being, I am Naga. Did you really think you were alone?
Quietly, the fire crackled. A few sparks drifted across the luminous green grass. The broken walls watched me, gently glowing amber in the moonlight. Naga was not there, and I wondered if I had dreamed it. In the stillness, I saw the broken arch of the main entrance to the abbey. A hooded figure in a black shroud stood watching me. By his side was a huge dog, which he held on a short chain.
A voice that I recognized, that I knew well, echoed around the abbey, strong in power and authority. “I have come to ask you a question, Jay.”
I got to my feet. My sheathed sword weighed on my back. I held the bow with the one remaining arrow in my left hand. The night air was suddenly cold on my skin and the fire burned low. I spoke, but it was more of a snarl. “Ask…”
“Do you support the dominion of man? Will you, as your father’s son, cower at their feet, feed them our blood and hold the torch while they scorch our world and drive us into the shadows? Or will you, as your mother’s son, fight them and drive them back into the frozen blackness of the night from which they came? Do you, Jay, my brother, support the dominion of man?”
He pushed back his hood. An icy wind blew and caught his shroud, blowing it like a black cape. He was my brother, my mirror, but as I had not seen him before. He was no high-school boy. He was ancient beyond measure, tall and proud and beautiful in a way that no human could understand. He was the earth, he was the trees and the grass and the rivers, and for a while, I felt the tug of his words. I understood him and felt a fury and a rage against this upstart species that was destroying our world, burning the air with their smog, murdering, raping, enslaving, spreading darkness over our home.
But even as I felt these things, the passion subsided and clarity came to me. I said, “It is not the dominion of man, Ar. It is the dominion of hate, and hate already has dominion over your heart. I do not support the dominion of hate, and so I will not fight them and drive them back into the dark. I will lend them what little light I have, to help them to see the beauty of their home, share it with us and grow from man to humanity. Will you, my brother, help me to bring them light?”
He seemed to freeze, to go rigid, then his whole body appeared to grow. His face blazed with a furious fire. The sky turned black with turbulent clouds. Lightning crackled and a furious wind tore through the abbey, whipping his hair across his face. He opened his mouth and roared, “Never by Dagda and Lugh! By Odin and Fjörgyn! May Vritra scorch the earth before I will be a friend to Manu!”
And so saying, he let slip his hound. It sprang from his grasp with burning eyes, baring its massive teeth. And in the same instant, he had a bow in his hand and he had loosed two flaming arrows straight at my heart.
Chapter Sixteen
My sword once again moved of its own volition. I had it suddenly in my right hand and batted away the arrows as though they were nothing more than annoying, sluggish flies. Then I tossed it in the air, and as it spun above me, I nocked my last remaining arrow, pulled and loosed, and the golden-tipped barb struck home into the hound’s heart. It exploded in a flash of purple and violet light with a terribly baying howl. I dropped the bow, held out my right hand and my sword dropped into it with a solid thud.
Ar En was in the air, Chinese kung fu warrior style, with his sword over his head. I leaped to meet him, and somehow, we had bridged the hundred yards between us. Our swords crashed in a shower of sparks, and as we landed, he swung at my legs. I jumped over his blade and brought my own crashing down at his skull. He avoided it easily and for the next ten minutes we rained blows on each other like two crazed demons. We defied gravity and all the laws of physics. We sprang to the highest peaks on the wall. We smashed through ancient stone. We did somersaults thirty feet in the air. Our blades moved at the speed of light, but still it was impossible for either of us to land a single blow or draw a single drop of blood.
Then, suddenly, the stupidity of the whole thing struck me and I rammed the blade of my sword into the turf and shouted at him, “Stop!”
He came to rest in front of me with a smile that might have been a sneer. He said, “Do you surrender, Jay?”
I shook my head. “This is absurd. Neither of us can defeat the other. Why this hatred? Why can’t we be brothers?”
He raised his sword and leveled the blade at me. “Because you serve the enemy of Mother Earth. Because your blood is tainted with their blood. Because they rape and murder Danu, even as they rape and murder each other, and yet you make them your friends and serve them.”
“What are you talking about?”
He roared and brought his blade double-handed down toward my head. I blocked him with bare inches to spare. He hammered over and over again, and with each blow, he spat words at me. “They. Must. Be. Banished! They. Must. Be. Cast. Back!”
And as he struck at me, I shouted at him, “Stop! Stop! Back w
here? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
He stopped, but his face was a mask of fury and his eyes were on fire. He raised his sword, pointed it into my face and bellowed, “Death! I am talking about death! The murder of our Mother Earth! The rape and murder of the spirit that gives us life! I am talking about you! You and your betrayal!”
“What betrayal? For crying out loud, talk sense! Who have I betrayed?”
There was silence as he stared at me and slowly his expression changed. “You really don’t know, do you? You don’t remember anything. You truly are a young being.”
Now it was he who stabbed his sword into the turf. He stepped toward me until we were just a couple of feet apart. Then he reached out with his right hand and placed it over my heart.
He said, “You are of the blood of the elven folk who walked this world long before man came with his war machines and his black heart. They have driven us from our woodlands and our mountain homes. They have driven us from the rivers and the glens, until the whole world is full of their smoke and the ugly banging of their iron machines. And some of us, Jay, believe it is time to take our home back and return these mad creatures into the blackness from which they came.” He was silent a moment, staring deep into my eyes. “But, you,” he said at last, “you count them as our friends. You take it as our destiny to walk with them and hold them close to your heart, as others have done before you. You do not remember, but you will.”
And with that, he twisted his hand and pulled, smiled and held before me the medallion that I had worn around my neck since that first day when I’d seen Gorm—the amulet inscribed by my mother. I reached for it, but he pulled away.
“Do you know what this is, Jay?”
“My mother gave—”
“Your mother?” He laughed. “This— This is…or should I say was? This was the source of your power. Without this, Jay, you are Jake. You are nothing! When you were swapped—when you were changelinged—your mother gave you this amulet. It allows you to draw your elven power into the world of men. We elves cannot walk easily in this world. We inhabit what your father would call a parallel dimension. It is very close, and we share many things—the trees, the rivers, even animals. And we know how to step through. But staying there, using our powers, is not easy. Elves who live among men must use these.” He held it up again and smiled. “Without your amulet, Jay, you are nothing.”
“Give it back to me.”
He leveled his sword at me again. He was grinning. He said, “On your knees. Time to die.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t feeling brave, but I felt a fury building inside me. “The thing with this world and any other world, Ar En, is that none of us gets out alive. So it’s down to what my Viking ancestors used to say, isn’t it? It isn’t a question of whether you die. It’s a question of how you die. And I plan to live and die on my feet. So if you’re going to kill me, do it now. I won’t kneel for you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So be it.” He gripped the hilt with both hands and swung back the blade.
I stiffened my sinews and swore to myself I would not wince. But before he struck, I said, “But as you kill me, Ar En, take a gift from me. The gift of knowledge. Know this, that you have looked so deep into your enemy’s eyes that you have become your enemy. You rage against humans for having a black heart. But how much blacker does a heart get than when one brother kills another? Let me tell you this. You hate humanity because of its species, not because of what they do, because look at you. You are doing the very thing you claim you hate in them.”
His face darkened, he curled his lip and swung back his blade. He stepped forward, let out a terrible roar and brought his sword crashing toward my neck. Then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. A great peace descended on me. I think I even smiled. I held his eye, unwavering, as I saw the keen silver blade slice through the air. I saw the look of madness in his eyes. I saw his hair fly across his face, and his teeth bared between snarling lips. Then the impossible happened. He seemed to shudder and falter. His eyes widened, staring past me. His jaw dropped and he opened his hands on the hilt of his sword. I saw him stumble back, his arms flailing as the blade tumbled to the ground, embedding itself in the turf.
I spun around to see what had caused his reaction.
She was easily thirty-feet tall. Her face was a mask of radiance. It was probably the most weirdly beautiful thing I had ever seen or could ever hope to see. It was like burnished silver, but at the same time, it was like you could see the whole cosmos through it—or in it. It was at once solid and transparent. Her eyes had no pupils. They were empty spaces that both saw everything and, if you had enough courage to look into them, therein you would see everything. But in her extreme beauty, she was also terrible and terrifying.
Her silver hair streamed out to an impossible length and seemed to entwine itself in the trees and the grass and the flowers and all living things, and errant strands seemed to lose themselves among the stars. Her robe also was silver, but as it moved in the breeze, a million different translucent, electric colors flashed and flowed across it—violet, chrome green, electric blue, acid yellow. And from her back, four vast dragonfly wings quivered and shimmered against the night sky. And when she spoke, her voice was both overpowering and quiet, gentle and terrifying.
“Would you spill the blood of an elf-son, Ar En?”
I turned. He had dropped to his knees, as he had wanted me to do. Tears were streaming down his face, but rage was in his eyes. He pointed a trembling finger at me. “But he betrays us! His destiny is with man!”
Her voice cut him dead. It seemed to come from the air itself, as though the light of the stars was speaking. “I look into your heart, Ar En, and I see only blackness. The world you wish to save does not spring from darkness but from light and love…”
Ar En struggled to his feet, his anger overcoming his terror. He indicated the woodlands and the hills under the moon. “Does man love the bear, the whale, the tiger? Does man love the living beings he exterminates day after day? Does man love the grass he will scorch from the face of his Mother Earth? Does man love the elf, the gnome or the fairy, whom he has driven to the brink of extinction? Does man love the naga, whom he has driven underground, into hiding? And now he will bring fire raining down on his mother and scorch her to the brink of very extinction!”
She remained impassive, with all of eternity gazing through her eyes. She said, “Would you be like man, then, Ar En?”
“No!” He stepped toward her, defiant now in his anger. “I would survive! And I would have the elven folk survive and our brethren the naga and the gnomes and all the children of the Earth Mother!” He gestured toward her. “You say I have blackness and hate in my heart, but does the fox hate the rabbit that it kills and eats? Does the hawk hate the dove? Does the lion hate the fawn? No! He must survive and he does what he must. And I say to you, Danu, that man must be expunged from our world and be cast back into the void before he destroys us!” And he pointed at me without looking at me, “And this…this traitor will fight to establish man’s dominion on our Earth!”
My head was reeling. I wanted to tell him to stop. He had me confused with somebody else. But somewhere inside I knew that there was some kind of twisted truth in his words. I was shaking my head at him and saying, “No…no…no!” but he couldn’t see or hear me—or wouldn’t see or hear me.
The being he had called Danu spoke. “Hern does not hate his prey, Ar En. There is no hatred or cruelty in the heart of the true hunter. He lives in the cycle of life and death. When his time comes, he dies well. And while he lives, he lives with courage and a bountiful heart. But you, Ar En, have lost your way. You have strayed from your path. You may die with courage, but you do not live well. You live in the shadow of your hatred. Go from me and learn to love. When you have found love, come back.”
She reached out her hand and a bead of light appeared on her fingertip. There was a huge flash and the last thing I saw was Ar En, in stark
silhouette, spiraling into a vortex of intense light. I heard his wailing scream then there was silence. I bent and retrieved my mother’s amulet.
* * * *
There was no moon. It happened quite suddenly. The sky was a peaceful, clear blue with a few early autumn clouds suspended motionless in the heavens. There was no fire. The crumbling walls of the abbey stood about us, silent and ancient. There was no Danu, no Ar En, not even Dicky.
I was sitting with my back against the wall and my rucksack by my side. The door through which we had stepped was on my right, closed. Ciara had her head on my shoulder and she was sleeping. Beyond her, Sebastian was curled up on the grass, also sleeping, as was Ciara’s dad. I felt for my sword and my bow, but they weren’t there. I felt for my cell. That wasn’t there, either.
I gently touched Ciara’s face. She opened her eyes and, as she focused on me, I knew that there was full knowledge in them. She smiled, reached out and touched my cheek and we kissed.
I said, “Do you remember?”
She didn’t answer. She said, “What time is it?”
I checked my watch. “My God, it’s half past three!”
She smiled again. “You have a debate to attend, Mr. Norgard.”
I looked at her in astonishment. “You cannot be serious!”
Her face told me she was. “Deadly. You promised.”
“But, after everything that happened last night—”
“Jake Norgard, if you ever want to see me again, you will keep your promise.” She turned and shook Sebastian and called out to her father, “Daddy, wake up!”
They both stirred and sat a moment, peering around them. Finally, Fionn scowled. “What in the name of sweet Jesus…?”
Ciara got to her feet and stared down at him with her hands on her hips. “Don’t! I have had just about enough of you and your miserable griping!” His eyes bulged and his jaw dropped, but she plowed right on. “Now, you listen to me, Mr. Michael Fionn! I am not your prisoner. I am your daughter. Are you able to see the difference? Can you understand the difference?”
The Dreaming Spires Page 13